BlackBerry Priv rumored to carry a $630 price tag Comments

Blackberry CEO Chen seems intent to kill off the mobile division with his "back to the future" ideas of physical QWERTY keyboards and oddly shaped phones like the passport. Sure, they'll get some sales, but they aren't mainstream. Years ago Samsung and others took on Blackberry with their own QWERTY offerings, but the majority of the world decided they wanted touch screen and it was pretty much all over for Blackberry.

Now Chen thinks the problem is BOS 10.x and has decided to try and grab market share with an Android offering. Perhaps BB market research will come up with a study that will tell Chen what the majority of people already know: the market won't pay a premium for a phone that has 2nd class specs.

Apparently Chen doesn't understand that there are plenty of people out there who will pay for a phone with a 1st class os combined with 1st class hardware, not one or the other.

Now Snapdragon just came out with it's 820 which all reports say have the heating issues of the 810 worked out. So why not give the Blackberry community a nice successor to the Z30, but with all the bells and whistles? Underclock the 820 to save on battery (BOS 10.x doesn't need the HP anyway), throw in 64GB internal storage and all the latest connectivity features to do wired/wireless connectivity to SmartTVs, projectors and monitors. That will get business users excited. Throw in the latest Sony camera sensor to make the phone on par with other flagships in that department. And speaking of Sony, make it waterproof too. Give it 3GB-4GB of RAM, not because it needs it, but to give the geeks and gamers something to get excited about. Finally, make it a bit thinner, but not at the cost of the battery, so it can be used as a real workhorse without recharging.

Now you have a successor to the Z30 that is worthy of the premium price. If you want to make it a horse race, make two versions, one with Android and one with BOS 10.x and let the market decide which one it wants.